Your Christmas or mine surrounded the loneliness of the holidays with two different family archetypes - the feuding British upper crust and the working class pub warmth. Despite occasionally playing to stereotypes, the film did a deep dive into both families, while fleshing out each of the characters. The final 20 minutes created Christmas magic when both came together.
The sequel has a bigger budget but less heart. It played with every single obnoxious stereotype imaginable with the loud lower class family. Occasionally, it also conflated race with class. Existing characters like the grandfathers on both sides and the sassy aunt received even less acknowledgment and maybe had five lines each in the film. There were newer characters added that did absolutely nothing for the plot including Jane Krakowski's American authoress.
This was such an absolute waste of talent. The original cast had so much chemistry I wanted to see the grandfathers playing off of each other, more honest intimacy between the young couple and the parents fleshing out their own relationships.
Whenever the script quieted down we got the magic intimate moments from the original. There were even times when the script let the characters grow and we learn that everyone in the working class family can ski rather than playing to stereotypes.
However, the strength of the original script surrounded the feelings of the family members and the honest communication.
But this felt more like let's take two different British family archetypes and put them into a big budget Hollywood movie and see what happens ... Sadly,none of the original magic ....
The sequel has a bigger budget but less heart. It played with every single obnoxious stereotype imaginable with the loud lower class family. Occasionally, it also conflated race with class. Existing characters like the grandfathers on both sides and the sassy aunt received even less acknowledgment and maybe had five lines each in the film. There were newer characters added that did absolutely nothing for the plot including Jane Krakowski's American authoress.
This was such an absolute waste of talent. The original cast had so much chemistry I wanted to see the grandfathers playing off of each other, more honest intimacy between the young couple and the parents fleshing out their own relationships.
Whenever the script quieted down we got the magic intimate moments from the original. There were even times when the script let the characters grow and we learn that everyone in the working class family can ski rather than playing to stereotypes.
However, the strength of the original script surrounded the feelings of the family members and the honest communication.
But this felt more like let's take two different British family archetypes and put them into a big budget Hollywood movie and see what happens ... Sadly,none of the original magic ....